The Enchanted Bluff

BY WILLA SIBERT CATHER

We had our swim before sundown, and while we were cooking our supper the oblique rays
of light made a dazzling glare on the white sand about us. The translucent red ball itself
sank behind the brown stretches of corn field as we sat down to eat, and the warm layer of
air that had rested over the water and our clean sand-bar grew fresher and smelled of the
rank ironweed and sunflowers growing on the flatter shore. The river was brown and
sluggish, like any other of the half-dozen streams that water the Nebraska corn lands. On
one shore was an irregular line of bald clay bluffs where a few scrub-oaks with thick
trunks and flat, twisted tops threw light shadows on the long grass. The western shore was
low and level, with corn fields that stretched to the sky-line, and all along the water's
edge were little sandy coves and beaches where slim cottonwoods and willow saplings
flickered.

The turbulence of the river in springtime discouraged milling, and, beyond keeping the
old red bridge in repair, the busy farmers did not concern themselves with the stream; so
the Sandtown boys were left in undisputed possession. In the autumn we hunted quail
through the miles of stubble and fodder land along the flat shore, and, after the winter
skating season was over and the ice had gone out, the spring freshets and flooded bottoms
gave us our great excitement of the year. The channel was never the same for two
successive seasons. Every spring the swollen stream undermined a bluff to the east, or bit
out a few acres of corn field to the west and whirled the soil away to deposit it in spumy
mud banks somewhere else. When the water fell low in midsummer, new sand-bars were thus
exposed to dry and whiten in the August sun. Sometimes these were banked so firmly that
the fury of the next freshet failed to unseat them; the little willow seedlings emerged
triumphantly from the yellow froth, broke into spring leaf, shot up into summer growth,
and with their mesh of roots bound together the moist sand beneath them against the
batterings of another April. Here and there a cottonwood soon glittered among them,
quivering in the low current of air that, even on breathless days when the dust hung like
smoke above the wagon road, trembled along the face of the water.

It was on such an island, in the third summer of its yellow green, that we built our
watch-fire; not in the thicket of dancing willow wands, but on the level terrace of fine
sand which had been added that spring; a little new bit of world, beautifully ridged with
ripple marks, and strewn with the tiny skeletons of turtles and fish, all as white and dry
as if they had been expertly cured. We had been careful not to mar the freshness of the
place, although we often swam out to it on summer evenings and lay on the sand to rest.

This was our last watch-fire of the year, and there were reasons why I should remember
it better than any of the others. Next week the other boys were to file back to their old
places in the Sandtown High School, but I was to go up to the Divide to teach my first
country school in the Norwegian district. I was already homesick at the thought of
quitting the boys with whom I had always played; of leaving the river, and going up into a
windy plain that was all windmills and corn fields and big pastures; where there was
nothing wilful or unmanageable in the landscape, no new islands, and no chance of
unfamiliar birds—such as often followed the watercourses.

Other boys came and went and used the river for fishing or skating, but we six were
sworn to the spirit of the stream, and we were friends mainly because of the river. There
were the two Hassler boys, Fritz and Otto, sons of the littleView Page ImageOTTO AND FRITZ CAUGHT THE FAT, HORNED CATFISH
German tailor. They were the
youngest of us; ragged boys of ten and twelve, with sunburned hair, weather-stained faces,
and pale blue eyes. Otto, the elder, was the best mathematician in school, and clever at
his books, but he always dropped out in the spring term as if the river could not get on
without him. He and Fritz caught the fat, horned catfish and sold them about the town, and
they lived so much in the water that they were as brown and sandy as the river itself.

There was Percy Pound, a fat, freckled boy with chubby cheeks, who took half a dozen
boys' story-papers and was always being kept in for reading detective stories behind his
desk. There was Tip Smith, destined by his freckles and red hair to be the buffoon in all
our games, though he walked like a timid little old man and had a funny, cracked laugh.
Tip worked hard in his father's grocery store every afternoon, and swept it out before
school in the morning. Even his recreations were laborious. He collected cigarette cards
and tin tobacco-tags indefatigably, and would sit for hours humped up over a snarling
little scroll-saw which he kept in his attic. His dearest possessions were some little
pill bottles that purported to contain grains of wheat from the Holy Land, water from the
Jordan and the Dead Sea, and earth from the Mount of Olives. His father had bought these
dull things from a Baptist missionary who peddled them, andView Image of Page 776 Tip seemed to derive great
satisfaction from their remote origin.

The tall boy was Arthur Adams. He had fine hazel eyes that were almost too reflective
and sympathetic for a boy, and such a pleasant voice that we all loved to hear him read
aloud. Even when he had to read poetry aloud at school, no one ever thought of laughing.
To be sure, he was not at school very much of the time. He was seventeen and should have
finished the High School the year before, but he was always off somewhere with his gun.
Arthur's mother was dead, and his father, who was feverishly absorbed in promoting
schemes, wanted to send the boy away to school and get him off his hands; but Arthur
always begged off for another year and promised to study. I remember him as a tall, brown
boy with an intelligent face, always lounging among a lot of us little fellows, laughing
at us oftener than with us, but such a soft, satisfied laugh that we felt rather flattered
when we provoked it. In after-years people said that Arthur had been given to evil ways
even as a lad, and it is true that we often saw him with the gambler's sons and with old
Spanish Fanny's boy, but if he learned anything ugly in their company he never betrayed it
to us. We would have followed Arthur anywhere, and I am bound to say that he led us into
no worse places than the cattail marshes and the stubble fields. These, then, were the
boys who camped with me that summer night upon the sand-bar.

TIP WORKED IN HIS FATHER'S GROCERY STORE

After we finished our supper we beat the willow thicket for driftwood. By the time we
had collected enough, night had fallen, and the pungent, weedy smell from the shore
increased with the coolness. We threw ourselves down about the fire and made another
futile effort to show Percy Pound the Little Dipper. We had tried it often before, but he
could never be got past the big one.

"You see those three big stars just below the handle, with the bright one in the
middle?" said Otto Hassler; "that's Orion's belt, and the bright one is the
clasp." I crawled behind Otto's shoulder and sighted up his armView Image of Page 777HE WAS ALWAYS OFF SOMEWHERE WITH HIS GUN
to the star that
seemed perched upon the tip of his steady forefinger. The Hassler boys did seine-fishing
at night, and they knew a good many stars.

Percy gave up the Little Dipper and lay back on the sand, his hands clasped under his
head. "I can see the North Star," he announced, contentedly, pointing toward it
with his big toe. "Anyone might get lost and need to know that."

We all looked up at it.

"How do you suppose Columbus felt when his compass didn't point north any more?" Tip asked.

Otto shook his head. "My father says that there was another North Star once, and
that maybe this one won't last always. I wonder what would happen to us down here if
anything went wrong with it?"

Arthur chuckled. "I wouldn't worry, Ott. Nothing's apt to happen to it in your
time. Look at the Milky Way! There must be lots of good dead Indians."

We lay back and looked, meditating, at the dark cover of the world. The gurgle of the
water had become heavier. We had often noticed a mutinous, complaining note in it at
night, quite different from its cheerful daytime chuckle, and seeming like the voice of a
much deeper and more powerful stream. Our water had always these two moods: the one of
sunny complaisance, the other of inconsolable, passionate regret.

"Queer how the stars are all in sort of diagrams," remarked Otto. "You
could do most any proposition in geometry with 'em. They always look as if they meant
something. Some folks say everybody's fortune is all written out in the stars, don't
they?"

"They believe so in the old country," Fritz affirmed.

But Arthur only laughed at him. "You're thinking of Napoleon, Fritzey. He had a
star that went out when he began to lose battles. I guess the stars don't keep any close
tally on Sandtown folks."

We were speculating on how many times we could count a hundred before the evening star
went down behind the corn fields, when someone cried, "There comes the moon, and it's
as big as a cart wheel!"

We all jumped up to greet it as it swam over the bluffs behind us. It came up like a
galleon in full sail; an enormous, barbaric thing, red as an angry heathen god.

"When the moon came up red like that, the Aztecs used to sacrifice their prisoners
on the temple top," Percy announced.

"Go on, Perce. You got that out of Golden Days. Do you believe that,
Arthur?" I appealed.

Arthur answered, quite seriously: "Like as not. The moon was one of their gods.
When my father was in Mexico City he saw the stone where they used to sacrifice their
prisoners."

As we dropped down by the fire again someone asked whether the Mound-Builders were
older than the Aztecs. When we once got upon the Mound-Builders we never willingly got
away from them, and we were still conjecturing when we heard a loud splash in the water.

"Must have been a big cat jumping," said Fritz. "They do sometimes. They
must see bugs in the dark. Look what a track the moon makes!"

There was a long, silvery streak on the water, and where the current fretted over a big
log it boiled up like gold pieces.

"Suppose there ever was any gold hid away in this old river?" Fritz
asked. He lay like a little brown Indian, close to the fire, his chin on his hand and his
bare feet in the air. His brother laughed at him, but Arthur took his suggestion
seriously.

"Some of the Spaniards thought there was gold up here somewhere. Seven cities
chuck full of gold, they had it, and Coronado and his men came up to hunt it. The
Spaniards were all over this country once."

Percy looked interested. "Was that before the Mormons went through?"

We all laughed at this.

"Long enough before. Before the Pilgrim Fathers, Perce. Maybe they came along this
very river. They always followed the watercourses."

"I wonder where this river really does begin?" Tip mused. That was an old and
a favorite mystery which the map did not clearly explain. On the map the little black line
stopped somewhere in western Kansas; but since rivers generally rose in mountains, it was
only reasonable to suppose that ours came from the Rockies. Its destination, we knew, was
the Missouri, and the Hassler boys always maintained that we could embark at Sandtown in
flood-time, follow our noses, and eventually arrive at New Orleans. Now they took up their
old argument. "If us boys had grit enough to try it, it wouldn't take no time to get
to Kansas City and St. Joe."

We began to talk about the places we wanted to go to. The Hassler boys wanted to see
the stock-yards in Kansas City, and Percy wanted to see a big store in Chicago. Arthur was
interlocutor and did not betray himself.

"Now it's your turn, Tip."

Tip rolled over on his elbow and poked the fire, and his eyes looked shyly out of his
queer, tight little face. "My place is awful far away. My uncle Bill told me about
it."

Tip's Uncle Bill was a wanderer, bitten with mining fever, who had drifted into
Sandtown with a broken arm, and when it was well had drifted out again.

"Where is it?"

"Aw, it's down in New Mexico somewheres. There aren't no railroads or anything.
You have to go on mules, and you run out of water before you get there and have to drink
canned tomatoes."

"Well, go on, kid. What's it like when you do get there?"

Tip sat up and excitedly began his story.

"There's a big red rock there that goes right up out of the sand for about nine
hundred feet. The country's flat all around it, and this here rock goes up all by itself,
like a monument. They call it the Enchanted Bluff down there, because no white man has
ever been on top of it. The sides are smooth rock, and straight up, like a wall. The
Indians say that hundreds of years ago, before the Spaniards came, there was a village
away up there in the air. The tribe that lived there had some sort of steps, made out of
wood and bark, hung down over the face of the bluff, and the braves went down to hunt and
carried water up in big jars swung on their backs. They kept a big supply of water and
dried meat up there, and never went down except to hunt. They were a peaceful tribe that
made cloth and pottery, and they went up there to get out of the wars. You see, they could
pick off any war party that tried to get up their little steps. The Indians say they were
a handsome people, and they had some sort of a queer religion. Uncle Bill thinks they were
Cliff-Dwellers who View Page ImageHE LED US INTO MARSHES AND STUBBLE FIELDSDrawn by Howard E. SmithHalf-tone plate engraved by F. A. PettitView Image of Page 780 had got into trouble and left home. They weren't fighters, anyhow.

"One time the braves were down hunting and an awful storm came up—a kind of
waterspout—and when they got back to their rock they found their little staircase had
been all broken to pieces, and only a few steps were left hanging away up in the air.
While they were camped at the foot of the rock, wondering what to do, a war party from the
north came along and massacred 'em to a man, with all the old folks and women looking on
from the rock. Then the war party went on south and left the village to get down the best
way they could. Of course they never got down. They starved to death up there, and when
the war party came back on their way north, they could hear the children crying from the
edge of the bluff where they had crawled out, but they didn't see a sign of a grown
Indian, and nobody has ever been up there since."

We exclaimed at this dolorous legend and sat up.

"There couldn't have been many people up there," Percy demurred. "How
big is the top, Tip?"

"Oh, pretty big. Big enough so that the rock doesn't look nearly as tall as it is.
The top's bigger than the base. The bluff is sort of worn away for several hundred feet
up. That's one reason it's so hard to climb."

I asked how the Indians got up, in the first place.

"Nobody knows how they got up or when. A hunting party came along once and saw
that there was a town up there, and that was all."

Otto rubbed his chin and looked thoughtful. "Of course there must be some way to
get up there. Couldn't people get a rope over someway and pull a ladder up?"

Tip's little eyes were shining with excitment. "I know a way. Me and Uncle Bill
talked it all over. There's a kind of rocket that would take a rope over—life-savers
use 'em—and then you could hoist a rope-ladder and peg it down at the bottom and make
it tight with guy-ropes on the other side. I'm going to climb that there bluff, and I've
got it all planned out.

Fritz asked what he expected to find when he got up there.

"Bones, maybe, or the ruins of their town, or pottery, or some of their idols.
There might be 'most anything up there. Anyhow, I want to see."

"Sure nobody else has been up there, Tip?" Arthur asked.

"Dead sure. Hardly anybody ever goes down there. Some hunters tried to cut steps
in the rock once, but they didn't get higher than a man can reach. The Bluff's all red
granite, and Uncle Bill thinks it's a boulder the glaciers left. It's a queer place,
anyhow. Nothing but cactus and desert for hundreds of miles, and yet right under the bluff
there's good water and plenty of grass. That's why the bison used to go down there."

Suddenly we heard a scream above our fire, and jumped up to see a dark, slim bird
floating southward far above us—a whooping-crane, we knew by her cry and her long
neck. We ran to the edge of the island, hoping we might see her alight, but she wavered
southward along the rivercourse until we lost her. The Hassler boys declared that by the
look of the heavens it must be after midnight, so we threw more wood on our fire, put on
our jackets, and curled down in the warm sand. Several of us pretended to doze, but I
fancy we were really thinking about Tip's Bluff and the extinct people. Over in the wood
the ring doves were calling mournfully to one another, and once we heard a dog bark, far
away. "Somebody getting into old Tommy's melon patch," Fritz murmured sleepily,
but nobody answered him. By and by Percy spoke out of the shadow.

"Say, Tip, when you go down there will you take me with you?"

"Maybe."

"Suppose one of us beats you down there, Tip?"

"Whoever gets to the Bluff first has got to promise to tell the rest of us exactly
what he finds," remarked one of the Hassler boys, and to this we all readily
assented.

Somewhat reassured, I dropped off to sleep. I must have dreamed about a race for the
Bluff, for I awoke in a kind of fear that other people were getting ahead of me and that I
was losing my chance. I sat up in my damp clothes and looked at the other boys, who lay
tumbled in uneasy attitudes about the dead fire. ItView Image of Page 781was still dark,
but the sky was blue
with the last wonderful azure of night. The stars glistened like crystal globes, and
trembled as if they shone through a depth of clear water. Even as I watched, they began to
pale and the sky brightened. Day came suddenly, almost instantaneously. I turned for
another look at the blue night, and it was gone. Everywhere the birds began to call, and
all manner of little insects began to chirp and hop about in the willows. A breeze sprang
up from the west and brought the heavy smell of ripened corn. The boys rolled over and
shook themselves. We stripped and plunged into the river just as the sun came up over the
windy bluffs.

When I came home to Sandtown at Christmas time, we skated out to our island and talked
over the whole project of the Enchanted Bluff, renewing our resolution to find it.

Although that was twenty years ago, none of us have ever climbed the Enchanted Bluff.
Percy Pound is a stockbrocker in Kansas City and will go nowhere that his red touring-car
cannot carry him. Otto Hassler went on the railroad and lost his foot braking; after which
he and Fritz succeeded their father as the town tailors.

Arthur sat about the sleepy little town all his life—he died before he was
twenty-five. The last time I saw him, when I was home on one of my college vacations, he
was sitting in a steamer-chair under a cottonwood tree in the little yard behind one of
the two Sandtown saloons. He was very untidy and his hand was not steady, but when he
rose, unabashed, to greet me, his eyes were as clear and warm as ever. When I had talked
with him for an hour and heard him laugh again, I wondered how it was that when Nature had
taken such pains with a man, from his hands to the arch of his long foot, she had ever
lost him in Sandtown. He joked about Tip Smith's Bluff, and declared he was going down
there just as soon as the weather got cooler; he thought the Grand Cañon might be worth
while, too.

I was perfectly sure when I left him that he would never get beyond the high plank
fence and the comfortable shade of the cottonwood. And, indeed, it was under that very
tree that he died one summer morning.

Tip Smith still talks about going to New Mexico. He married a slatternly, unthrifty
country girl, has been much tied to a perambulator, and has grown stooped and gray from
irregular meals and broken sleep. But the worst of his difficulties are now over, and he
has, as he says, come into easy water. When I was last in Sandtown I walked home with him
late one moonlight night, after he had balanced his cash and shut up his store. We took
the long way around and sat down on the schoolhouse steps, and between us we quite revived
the romance of the lone red rock and the extinct people. Tip insists that he still means
to go down there, but he thinks now he will wait until his boy, Bert, is old enough to go
with him. Bert has been let into the story, and thinks of nothing but the Enchanted Bluff.